Nadia Murad Basee

Nadia Murad
Nadia Murad (2017)
Born	Nadia Murad Basee Taha 1995 Kocho, Sinjar Iraq
Occupation	Human rights activist
Years active	2014-present

Nadia Murad Basee Taha (Ezdiki: Nadiye Murad, Kurdish: نادية مراد; born 1995) is a Yazidi human rights activist,Nobel Peace Prize nominee and since September 2016 the first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking of the United Nations. Nadia's mission is sponsored and supported by Yazda: Global Yazidi Organization. She was kidnapped and held by the Islamic State in August 2014.

Murad was born in the village of Kocho in Sinjar, northern Iraq. Her family, of the Yazidi people, were farmers and she grew up on a farm.

At the age of 19, Murad was a student living in the village of Kocho in Sinjar, northern Iraq when Islamic State fighters rounded up the Yazidi community in the village killing 600 people – including six of Nadia's brothers and stepbrothers – and taking the younger women into slavery. That year Murad was one of more than 6,700 Yazidi women taken prisoner by Islamic State in Iraq. She was held as a slave in the city of Mosul, beaten, burned with cigarettes, and raped when trying to escape. In November 2014, Nadia was able to escape after her captor left the house unlocked. She was taken in by a neighbouring family who were able to smuggle her out of the Islamic State controlled area, allowing her to make her way to a refugee camp in Duhok, northern Iraq, and then to Stuttgart, Germany.

In 16 December 2015, Murad briefed the United Nations Security Council on the issue of human trafficking and conflict, the first time the Council was briefed on human trafficking. As part of her role as an ambassador, Murad will participate in global and local advocacy initiatives to bring awareness of human trafficking and refugees. Murad reaches out to refugee and survivor communities, listening to testimonies of victims of trafficking and genocide.